Second fire station faces uphill battle in Exeter

EXETER — Fire Chief Brian Comeau acknowledged he's the fifth chief who's tried to get a second fire station built in town.

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By Jeff McMenemy

seacoastonline.com

By Jeff McMenemy

Posted Sep. 3, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By Jeff McMenemy
Posted Sep. 3, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

EXETER — Fire Chief Brian Comeau acknowledged he's the fifth chief who's tried to get a second fire station built in town.

A plan to build a $4.5 million second fire station on the west side of town was rejected by voters in 2004, but Comeau is now asking selectmen to support a plan to build a smaller $2.5 million station on Epping Road.

"As fire chief, I have to tell the selectmen and people in town what I need to do my job and to provide fire services to the community," Comeau said.

Comeau, during an interview last week, said what makes getting a second station on the town warrant difficult is the question of how many new firefighters will be needed to man the station, and how much that will cost.

"The one issue everyone seems to be getting hung up on is the manning," Comeau said. "And really that isn't an issue for the Planning Board ... that's really a management decision that the full board would have to have more of a say on."

Comeau recently presented the plan to the Planning Board as part of the town's 2014 Capital Improvement Program, but selectmen will ultimately decide what projects get on the town warrant.

The proposal calls for building a three-bay substation on Epping Road that wouldn't need any additional fire apparatus to operate.

Selectmen approved the hiring of four new firefighters in 2007 with the goal of reducing department overtime, and those additional firefighters — as part of the 26 full-time firefighters with Comeau, two assistant chiefs and a fire prevention officer — could man a new station "most of the time," without adding new personnel, Comeau said.

But to deal with sick time and vacation, they likely would have to add three new firefighters or a second station would be closed 50-60 percent of the time, Comeau said.

Comeau and Assistant Fire Chief Eric Wilking said if a second station isn't built, the department's response time to emergencies — which national fire standards say should be four minutes or less — will only meet that goal 52 percent of the time.

Wilking said the average response time from the downtown station to Exeter Area High School is about 11 minutes.

"We feel that the taxpayers on the other side of (Route) 101 deserve the same kind of service as the taxpayers downtown and we feel when we can't get to that fire ... for 10 minutes or we can't get to the high school for 11 or 12 minutes that we're not providing the same level of service," Wilking said.

He noted that a second station would allow firefighters to respond to 84 percent of calls anywhere in town in four minutes or less.

Comeau understands that Exeter is "not an inexpensive community to live in."

"People vote with their wallets, but we provide a value for this service too," Comeau said.

Selectman Don Clement said last week he has not yet made up his mind about whether he will vote to put the new station on the town warrant.

"I still have a lot of questions ... my chief concerns naturally come around to staffing," Clement said. "If you put up a second station, you're going to have to staff it. You build a fire station it's a one-time cost, but you have reoccurring costs to staff it."

Selectman Dan Chartrand also raised concern about how much it would cost to staff a second station, but said he hasn't yet made a decision either.

"I don't want to add staff, that's where I struggle," Chartrand said.

He stressed he would be more receptive to a plan to build a second station if fire officials "were looking at regionalizing."

"Rationalization would be one thing that would really grab my attention," he said.

He said towns — especially smaller towns — can no longer afford to run their own departments no matter the size of the town.

"We are past the point where all of these different towns can have their own library, their own fire department, their own police department," Chartrand said. "It creates such a tremendous tax burden."

He said some towns have tried but failed to regionalize services because in the end they felt it was more important to retain local control.

"What's going to end up happening is it's going to end up controlling their budgets which are too big for their tax base," Chartrand said.

Comeau said he doesn't know if the proposal has the support of the majority of the Board of Selectmen, but he will continue to tell the public what the fire department needs to do its job.

As an Exeter resident, he understands the proposed fire station is just one of many important projects.

"I don't know if there's any real plan," he said. "We've gone from spending millions of dollars on Jady Hill, now there's a water treatment plant, to a sewer plant, there's no real place in there where there's a break for the voters and the taxpayers. You never know what's coming down the road."

Still the need for a second station doesn't change, Comeau said.

"We're certainly going to give 110 percent like we always do, whether we get a fire station out in the west or not," he said.